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Martha Rankin found the going a bit rough when she dipped her toe back into the employment pool after the economic downturn cost her two factory jobs in a little under four months last year.

Then Rankin spotted a flier promoting jobs with the U.S. Census Bureau. Today, she’s employed at the agency’s Edwardsville office where she is continuing a family tradition that began when her mother served as a head-counter in the 1960 and 1970 censuses.

Best of all, as a recruiting clerk, Rankin is making the same kind of phone call she got at the beginning of the year: The one telling applicants that they, too, have been hired by the census.

"It feels so good because they are so excited," she said. "They tell me, ‘I’ve been looking for a job for so long.’ They are just elated."

A lot of people have been on the other end of that call. Since starting to hire three months ago, the bureau has filled all its local slots in Illinois and Missouri for its first phase of hiring. In St. Louis, 9,000 people turned out for 900 positions. Illinois tested 7,300 people for 1,700 part-time verification jobs in the central and southern part of the state.

The positions are for the door-to-door canvass that begins April 6 to verify street addresses.

The response has been a boon to an agency that, in better times, has seen pretty slim pickings in the job pool.

"We’ve been able to select the cream of the crop," said Dennis Johnson, the Missouri regional manager of the Census Bureau, based in Kansas City.

Many applicants are brought to the bureau’s attention from unemployment offices, said Kathy Turner, the Local Census Office manager in Edwardsville.

"Obviously, census jobs are part-time positions," Turner pointed out. "But it gives people an opportunity to make money until something else comes along."

And at an average of $11.50 per hour, the pay isn’t bad either.

Census officials say this time around they are seeing more and more professionals, many with advanced degrees, than in the past us fast cash.

Another big difference, said Johnson, is that applicants are now approaching the agency; in past censuses, the bureau tied jobs to community service in pitches to retirees and full-time workers searching for extra income.

"People in the past weren’t really looking for work, so we had to approach it differently," he said.

"Now we’re seeing people that need to work and that’s a lot different situation. We’re providing some very needed relief for people."

Nor has the Census Bureau stopped hiring. The next big push will come as the agency prepares for a formal count of the American population in April 2010.

At that point, there will be 494 field offices across the country. Johnson said the local offices, one in each congressional district, will each employ approximately 900 people.

The pool will be drawn from applicants who tested successfully, but weren’t hired, for the initial stage jobs — April’s address canvass and other preliminary work this fall.

Of the 7,300 people who applied for the south-central Illinois positions, for example, 6,800 were wait-listed for future employment.

The bureau will begin accepting applications for most of those jobs in the fall.

Before the agency is finished hiring, Muriel Jackson, a media specialist at the bureau’s regional headquarters in Chicago, says Martha Rankin and others involved in the recruiting effort will be making a lot more happy telephone calls.

"It’s very satisfying to be able to offer people jobs in this economy," she said. "Not only jobs, but good-paying jobs with a lot of responsibility riding on them."

sgiegerich@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8172
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Filed under: money by Wolf